AHA Session 95
Friday, January 5, 2024: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM
Continental Ballroom 2 (Hilton Union Square, Ballroom)
Chair:
Maurice Crandall, Yavapai–Apache Nation and Arizona State University
Panel:
Brooke M. Bauer, Catawba Nation and University of Tennessee at Knoxville
Felicia Garcia, Samala Chumash and Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center
Darren Parry, Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation and Utah State University
Rose Stremlau, Davidson College
Felicia Garcia, Samala Chumash and Santa Ynez Chumash Museum and Cultural Center
Darren Parry, Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation and Utah State University
Rose Stremlau, Davidson College
Session Abstract
In the past decade, land acknowledgements have become an increasingly common feature at academic conferences, government meetings, and social gatherings. Ostensibly motivated by a desire to acknowledge the original inhabitants and caretakers of the lands upon which these gatherings take place, they can range from sincere expressions of relationship-building between organizations and Indigenous communities to pro forma box-checking by institutions wanting to appear accountable to Indigenous peoples. Many have begun to wonder whether they have become entirely performative and lacking any real intention of collaborating with Indigenous peoples and communities. Some have even expressed “land acknowledgment exhaustion,” after repeatedly being called upon to write or deliver these acknowledgments. This session brings together five individuals with significant land acknowledgment experience and expertise for a roundtable discussion. Together, we will explore issues such as the history of land acknowledgments, their place and utility, whose responsibility it is to write and deliver them, and possible future directions for acknowledgments, including whether they should be a permanent part of public discourse. We aim to have a frank discussion about the merits and possibilities of land acknowledgments and our experiences with them—especially from an Indigenous perspective—ranging from profound to humorous to infuriating. This roundtable is also considerably diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity, and institutional affiliation. Four of the five discussants are citizens of tribal nations, and all have significant experience crafting, delivering, and contemplating land acknowledgments.
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